Searchers for missing relatives discovered that at least 65 bodies, and at most 5,000 bone fragments from human beings, were found in a Mexican clandestine grave.
According to Spanish news agency EFE, the group Solecito Collective made this announcement Wednesday while authorities in Veracruz, the Gulf state, continue their search for more corpses.
This secret burial place was located near the lagoon of Alvarado in Veracruz, which is a fishing port. It was discovered in March 2017.
Jorge Winckler Ortiz, then Veracruz State Attorney general, ordered the search for El Arbolillo’s burial ground.
Solecito Collective, a group dedicated to the search of people reported missing in Mexico, announced Wednesday that 65 bodies and at least 5,000 human bone fragments were recovered from a clandestine grave in the state of Veracruz since 2020. The image above is of a Veracruz State attorney general’s office member, who is responsible for securing El Arbolillo’s burial site that was discovered initially in March 2017.
Veracruz State Police members (pictured September 7, 2018, working at the Alvarado mass grave site) set up a perimeter for exhumation
The site of a hidden grave in Colinas de Santa Fe in Veracruz in 2016 is shown with a human verbra in a latex glove. It is believed to be one of the largest burial sites in Latin America.
Federal and state officials led the search, along with members of Solecito Colectivo. The operation was stopped abruptly just two months after its inception.
Solecito Colectivo founder Ángeles Díaz Gaona told EFE that the operation was limited to barely five weeks in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed in February without skipping a beat after the group pressured Governor Cuitláhuac García and State Attorney General Veronica Hernández.
According to some, the victims may have been the casualties of an ongoing war between government and cartel. The murders occurred between 2011 and 2012.
The hat of a missing man was reportedly found in a mass grave in Alvarado in 2017, a Mexican town. The search for the bodies began in 2018, but was stopped by Jorge Winckler Ortiz, then the State Attorney General. Exhumations began on the site in 2020, but were stopped by the Pandemic. Nearly 5,000 human remains and 65 corpses have been recovered since then.
Veracruz employees look for a secret grave site where 166 corpses were found in 2018.
Relatives of missing people arrive on September 17, 2018 at the site where a mass grave was found in El Arbolillo, a community in the city of Alvarado that is located in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz
On September 7, 2018, police officers stood guard at the Alvarado mass grave, Mexico.
Díaz Gaona estimates that mass grave in El Arbolillo could be much bigger than the one that was discovered in 2016 in the Veracruz town of Colinas de Santa Fe – considered to be the largest to date in Latin America – where 300 bodies and more than 22,000 human remains were removed.
She stated, “If you continue to search it is possible that this could be,”
Data from the Mexican government shows that 90.148 people were reported missing.
Between September 2020 and July 20,21, at least 479 sites for clandestine burials were discovered. In that time, authorities found 1,048 bodies but only 239. A total of 96 corpses were returned to their families for burial.